Day: June 24, 2016

Polykastro, a Greek town near the Macedonian border with about 7,000 residents was the link to civilization for over 10,000 refugees holed up in massive unofficial camps in the area (Idomeni is 15 minutes away) before they were cleared in the last month. And the town was also a link to civilization for as many as 1,000 volunteers who had come in from all over the world to help mitigate a crisis that all the countries of the United Nations have been somehow unable to deal with. Now that the unofficial camps have been closed, the number of refugees in the area has dwindled and so has the number of volunteers. But Polykastro is a different place now. This is Part Three of the story. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here.

This is not a portrait of a quiet Christian town without a history, suddenly tossed into the stream of the real by current events. Every town has a history, and if it doesn’t then it will soon.

Polykastro is indeed quaint, it’s monuments sit in empty parks, grass crawling up their legs. There’s a football field and a dozen ice cream parlors. Most people you’ll meet on the street are ethnic Greeks, if that means anything. But in 1900, this was part of the Ottoman Empire, there were more Muslim Turks than Christian Greeks, and the Muslims were the ruling class. Then they fought some local battles, then the Empire collapsed.

Bit this is a portrait of a small, shrinking town, suddenly changed again, if only temporarily, by the massive refugee camps — Idomeni and Nea Kavala — that were pitched in fields nearby.